Telecommunications service providers are entering the age wherein new service offerings and technological changes occur on a frequent basis. In order to maintain a competitive edge, providers need the ability to easily provide proposals that cover a customer's existing service for voice, data, video and Internet networks in terms of their own products. Presently the creation of such proposals is a semi-manual system that is costly and often inaccurate.
With the passage of the Telecommunications Act (“the Act”) of 1996, the United States telecommunications industry is in a state of radical change. Among other things, the Act requires that Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILEC), the regulated entity that owns and administers an existing access network, provide to any requesting telecommunications carrier (hereinafter referred to as “Competitive Local Exchange Carriers” (CLEC), Integrated Communications Provider (ICP), or Competitive Service Provider (CSP)) nondiscriminatory access to network elements on an unbundled basis and to allow CLECs, ISPs or CSPs to combine such network elements in order to provide telecommunications service. ILECs also have a duty to provide to CLECs interconnection with their network for the transmission and routing of telephone exchange service and exchange access. The interconnection contemplated by the Act provides nondiscriminatory access or interconnection to such services or information as are necessary to allow the requesting CLEC to implement local dialing parity, including nondiscriminatory access to telephone numbers, operator service, directory assistance, and directory listing, with no unreasonable dialing delays. The provisions of the Act have demonstrated a need for competing exchange carriers to be interconnected so that customers can seamlessly receive calls that originate on another carrier's network and place calls that terminate on another's carrier's network without performing additional activities, such as dialing extra digits, etc. A CLEC can offer multiple types of services, including basic POTS, IXC long distance carrier service, ISP Internet Service Provider, VPN (virtual private network), VoIP (voice over internet), VoDSL (voice over DSL access), video, etc. Many of the more advanced services require access to broadband services.
Recent adoption of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology allows customer access to these broadband services over their existing copper wire connection to the ILEC. With DSL, subscribers only need to purchase (or lease) a comparatively inexpensive DSL modem and connect it to the existing copper wire connection. Other advances in broadband data services can be combined with DSL service to provide the subscriber with additional connectivity options. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are also seeing explosive growth, especially in the remote-office and tele-commuter environments. VPNs and DSL allow a subscriber to connect to a private corporate network over a public infrastructure securely, while maintaining high bit-rate transmissions. Subscribers are also beginning to test the waters with Voice Over DSL (VoDSL) deployments. This technology allows subscribers to run multiple phone and data connections over a single copper line, using just one customer premise xDSL modem.
The opportunities for CLECs, IXCs, and ISPs (collectively identified from this point on as Integrated Communications Providers or ICPs) offering these services are immense. Data transport demands have opened up a whole new set of revenue generating opportunities for ICPs. However, the growth rate and myriad of convergent offerings make it difficult for companies to establish themselves in any one market. To be successful, ICPs need to remain flexible, customer focused, and establish a continual set of value propositions and competitive advantages within the marketplace.
ILECs have developed different methods to allow ICPs to electronically place orders with the ILEC for wholesale products and services. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,104,999 to Gilles et al. and incorporated by reference herein, discloses that LECs use Internet browser forms, proprietary protocols and electronic data interchange (EDI).
In one embodiment, the Gilles patent discloses methods of using EDI for telecommunication provider retrieval of customer service records and electronic services ordering. An authorized ICP or reseller utilizes EDI to request from the ILEC the present services being provided to a particular customer. The ILEC uses EDI to transfer the customer service record to the ICP. In a separate embodiment, the ICP uses EDI to electronically order revisions or additions to service.
During electronic services ordering, a number of pre-ordering steps are required. For example, if a telephone number, Internet domain name or Internet Protocol (IP) address is available it is reserved as part of the pre-ordering function. In addition, due date of initiation of new service is transmitted and either confirmed or revised. Also, certain validation steps are required, including customer service address.
Various uses have been made of electronic access to customer service records (CSR). For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,032,132 to Nelson discloses using the CSR to validate billing between an ICP and an ILEC. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,833 to Harper et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,920,846 to Storch et al. disclose an ILEC using the CSR to process changes to service provided by the ILEC and to respond to CLEC requested changes.
However, the customer service record (CSR) is also independently useful to ICPs. As the CSR often identifies both ILEC provided services as well as services of competing ICPs and resellers, it is convenient for ICPs and resellers to retrieve a customer service CSR in preparing a sales proposal. Following retrieval, the CSR is interpreted and ICP competing service offerings are identified. The sales proposal is based upon this analysis and a final proposal is presented to the customer. Up to now, the CSR has been printed then manually compared to an ICP's service offerings. This manual process is labor intensive and prone to errors. As a result, a method of automating the sales proposal function based on CSR is needed.
Once a customer accepts a sales proposal for ICP services, it must be provisioned and appropriate request for service orders issued to ILECs. Presently these requests are manually originated. By automating the activation and provisioning process, ICPs will be able to significantly reduce the overhead that is associated with manual provisioning processes. Additionally, the error rate associated with manual activation will be reduced significantly as well.
Of course, an ICP must be successful in obtaining customers and also capable of adequately servicing those customers at a competitive price. Historically, telecommunication service customers dealt with a single ILEC that was responsible for all aspects of the customers needs, including service interruptions. ICPs are in the difficult situation of dealing with customer demands for single point service contact while bundling services from multiple telecommunication providers. When a customer reports interruptions in service, an ICP must determine which service provider or providers are involved and “decompose” the trouble sources thereby identifying sub-components and their ownership. Next, the ICP must initiate trouble ticket controls, which refer trouble reports/work steps systems/organizations involved in testing and repair of the service impairment. The referrals then need to be monitored closely, through closeout of the impairment.
Once repaired, the ICP must ensure that any rebate or credit defined by contractual relationships is honored by the billing system when the report is closed. Finally, it is advantageous for the ICP to maintain a history of service failures in order to determine the areas in which it needs to improve, as well as how well and how quickly it responds to customer situations.
In order to stay competitive, ICPs typically use a hybrid network with the ICP providing only a portion of the network equipment. As a result, an ICP may have multiple trading partners that fulfill different components of their network offerings. The ICP may own some pieces required to service the customer, such as a local switch, while they may lease others, such as the local loop. Finally, they may need to resell certain parts of a convergent order, such as a cable or wireless portion, from wholesalers or other trading partners. Components owned by the ICP are termed “on-net”, while leased components or resold services are termed “off-net.”
Depending upon the technology available for a customer's location and the components available from the ICP, an optimal mix of on-net and off-net resources are selected. This selection process is key to an ICP's ability to offer competitively priced services. Manual selection of the optimal mix is expensive and prone to errors. As a result it is desirable that an ICP use an automatic means of selecting the optimal mix of components to fulfill a customer's service requirements.